Primal Scream rediscover ‘perfect’ album

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Primal Scream rediscover ‘perfect’ album

Primal Scream "made the perfect album" but decided to scrap it.

The indie rock group – now comprised of Bobby Gillespie, Andrew Innes, Martin Duffy, Darrin Mooney, Barrie Cadogan and Simone Butler – recorded a different version of their 1994 LP ‘Give Out But Don’t Give Up’ but "panicked" after coming to the conclusion that it was "so well played" it didn’t sound like a Primal Scream album.

Speaking to The Times newspaper, guitarist Innes said: "I don’t know what we were thinking. It was so slick, so nice, so well played that we panicked. It sounded too grown-up."

Singer Gillespie added: "We made a perfect album: three rockers, six ballads and a centrepiece. Then we replaced it with something patchy. We confused ourselves."

Innes recently found the long-forgotten tapes marked "Ardent Studios" whilst he was clearing out his basement and remembered the group had recorded with renowned producer Tom Dowd – who had worked with the likes of Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin – in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and Ardent Studios, Memphis.

Innes said: "We were in a state. ‘Screamadelica’ left us in a weird place. Everything we dreamt of since the age of 16 had come true. What do you do after that? We had a blank future. We had been on a huge high, living the rock ‘n’ roll dream, and then, boom, it ends. Noel Gallagher wrote three albums’ worth of songs before Oasis broke. We had nothing."

Although the released version of the record featured future classics such as ‘Jailbird’, ‘(I’m Gonna) Cry Myself Blind’ and ‘Rocks’, Gillespie believes that Primal Scream went into the sessions on a "comedown" following the enormous success of dance-indie LP ‘Screamadelica’ and that changed the spirit of the band.

The frontman said: "I remember thinking ‘This will be a downer record’. After the euphoria of ‘Screamadelica’ we were writing sad, slow songs because we were on a massive comedown. And there was no getting wasted because we were working with serious people … We had to step up."

Primal Scream’s ‘Give Out But Don’t Give Up: The Original Memphis Recordings’ is available from Friday (12.10.18).